Research by Assistant Professors Jennifer Merluzzi (Tulane) and Adina Sterling (Stanford) studied promotions in a sales business over a 10 year period and found that both women and Blacks experienced statistically fewer promotions than whites and males. However, they did find that Blacks who were hired through a referral by another employee had higher promotion rates (though not high enough to close the gap to whites.) There was, however, no positive effect for women being hired through referrals. Other research has shown that when a respected individual vouches for the capabilities and competence of a diverse employee, performance is assessed more positively, indicating bias has been disrupted. It is possible a similar effect is being observed in this study.

Princeton and Boston University researchers have found evidence that the emerging field of artificial intelligence may not be immune to implicit bias. Inspired by the implicit association test (IAT), researchers used algorithms to identify associations based on hundreds of billions of words on the internet and found similar results to the IAT. They also found that Google's translation software converts gender-neutral pronouns from several languages into “he” for doctor, and “she” for nurse.

A year-long study demonstrated the efficacy of women engineering students being mentored by another woman engineer. Nilanjana Dasgupta, from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, found that the mentored women were motivated, self-assured and less anxious than those paired with male mentors or having no mentor at all. She describes mentors as “social vaccines,” preserving the students’ confidence and feeling of belonging. Of the women followed during the study, all of those with women mentors stayed with the program while their non-mentored counterparts saw an 11% dropout rate.

San Francisco-based Square released its diversity report showing increases in the percent of women and underrepresented minorities across the company. In tech and leadership, women increased by 5%, and minorities by 3% in tech and 2% in leadership. Also, the company expanded the required EEOC reporting by asking employees about sexual orientation and gender identity (80% are heterosexual), people with disabilities (1%), veteran status (1%) and primary language spoken (30% claim a language other than English).​Square explicitly rejects the “pipeline problem” in terms of finding qualified candidates across the diversity spectrum. The company also reported on retention as a measure of the success of its inclusion element, “where all employees feel they are valued, recognized, and able to succeed.” In engineering roles, “women left at half the rate of men” and underrepresented minorities resigned at half the rate of other groups.

Thirty law firms are piloting a new rule requiring 30% of leadership candidates consist of minorities and women. The Mansfield rule, named after the first female lawyer, applies to both leadership roles and promotions to equity partner.

​While 72 countries ban employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, the US is not among them. Employees can be fired because of their sexual orientation in 28 states and transgender employees can be fired for their gender identity in 30 states. However, 92% of Fortune 500 companies’ non-discrimination policies protect LGB employees and 82% include gender identity. Additionally, 61% of those companies offer domestic partner health benefits and 50% offer transgender-inclusive benefits.

Citing newsworthy instances of women, “... being interrupted, talked over, shut down or penalized for speaking out,” particularly when they are outnumbered by men, this article shares studies and anecdotal evidence confirming this "universal" workplace dynamic. Research includes a Yale study concluding that men with power (but not women) talked more in Senate, and another finding that angry men in the workplace were rewarded while angry women were perceived as incompetent. A Princeton/Brigham Young study found that women spoke less than men until they comprised 80% of school board representation.

While women accounted for only 28% of new board members overall in 2016 (down 2 percentage points from 2015), they accounted for 40% of new board members in tech (up from 26.5% in 2015). Additionally, the report finds:African-Americans constituted 9% of new appointees in 2016, unchanged from prior year.Hispanics constituted 6% of new appointees in 2016, the highest figure since 2009 and up 2 percentage points from 2015.Asians and Asian-Americans constituted 6% of new appointees in 2016, up 1 percentage point from the prior year.